none of us really have pat answers, just sharing here and this is great board to do that, so here goes.
hello Ryan!

first off, Dude, I would like to formally introduce you to Ryan here. possibly the most proliferent ober I've met of such young tenure and he did put his feet where his mouth is one day and showed up when we were both obe. I don't know if that was a year ago or so..time doesn't seem to matter much anymore. Ryan then began telling me of I believe his first retrieval..I nodded my head in the appropriate places..I was a little dazed and wondering who he was. never found out until I saw his picture.
anyhoo, keep in mind time is different on the other side and projecting in real time, what we call real time as if the other time zone is not real. the past and the future and now are all one thing although I can't explain that.
but I can try as u already said Dude, it aint a dream!

Suppose Mind is all, that we are Mind in a body. suppose we only believe in what we can see, touch, smell, hear with these physical senses. then suppose those nuerons firing off a dream create a film of images which speed by the nonphysical retina. and we say, its a dream. suppose u walk into the dream and start interacting with others in the dream, then its projection unto the mind film..my point is when you wake up in the morn and go off to work, whos to say that your brain is not creating you life on film the same as a mind projection or obe? so whether you're obe or walking around with a physical vehicle its all still a movie you're in because no matter if you're here or there, dead or alive in C1, its still your mind projecting itself into form..so we shouldn't really be surprised that we can project our minds in another "space" and inhabit an astral body in that space, although we sure do wish we had some control buttons to help us exit and return better, maybe boards like these, by sharing our experiences, we can grow into more knowledge of how to create better realities for ourself.
meanwhile..back to my movie...